Musings of Jack Barrow, blogging about a life of writing and philosophy; creating fiction and non fiction, sourced from pop philosophy and the irrational. Occasional outbursts on matters political, comical or just the downright infuriating. Currently writing a travelogue about a six week tour of the 39 historic counties of England while trying to earn enough money for a new garden fence.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Does gravity push?

Many years ago a friend in a pub suggested that gravity pushes and it's only the existence of a planet beneath our feet that creates a shadow that stops us being pushed away from the planet. If gravity pushes could it explain inflation and, at the same time, the increased expansion of the universe in the later part of cosmological history?

If gravity pushes and it is merely the effect of large masses shielding other masses from the gravity of the rest of the universe that pushes the whole universe apart, inflation could have occurred during a period when there was little or no matter to shield the universe from gravity thus pushing it apart at an extreme rate. Then when matter appeared inflation would have stopped dramatically because the sudden shielding effect.

Now, 14Bn years later the universe appears to be speeding up, thus the invention of dark energy to explain where this expansion is coming from. However, gravity pushing could explain this by the fact that the universe is so expanded by now that it's so far apart the shielding effect is weakened and another period of rapid expansion could be taking place. In other words gravity pushing would only have a cohesive effect on a dense universe but a universe that is sparse (or widely distributed) its shielding effect would be very weak.

Thus we can explain inflation and dark energy, which has always seemed a bit rubbish otherwise. All we need to do is wrap up dark matter in this and we might have a hat trick which could become the new standard model of cosmology.

Who is Jack Barrow?

I live in Hertfordshire, England, where I write about popular philosophy in modern life. I have a particular interest in the way people are rejecting mainstream religion and creating their own philosophies from the bottom up. These ideas cannot really be described as theological in the way that western religions are and they seem closer to eastern mysticism such Buddhism or Zen, while being dressed up with symbolism drawn from folkloric sources such as Tarot or the Zodiac. I try to bring an intellectual rigour to such subjects instead of merely accepting statements such as the incredibly fluffy idea of, 'everything has an opposite!' No it doesn't! What's the opposite of a football?

My first novel, The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil has recently been released worldwide after receiving excellent reviews in the UK. I'm currently working on a travelogue, which is distracting me from working on the second novel about an end of the world religious cult, Morris Men practised in the martial arts and the accidental destruction of a literary festival.